by Chris Carter
Mr. J had been expecting that question. ‘At the moment – indefinitely.’
A much longer pause this time.
‘What’s this really about, Mr. J?’ Razor’s voice remained unaltered. ‘Are you calling me to tell me you’re retiring? You know better than anyone that, in this business, retirement comes in a very ugly and final manner.’
Mr. J stayed silent.
‘Is this about Fresno? Did something happen that you’re not telling me?’
‘No, Razor, this is not about Fresno.’
‘So talk to me straight, Mr. J, because right about now your request is sounding a lot like a getaway, like you’re changing sides, and you know we don’t take kindly to those.’
Mr. J had thought long and hard about this. There were very few people on this earth who he trusted completely. In the whole of California, Razor was the only one. He told him enough for Razor to appreciate his decision.
‘Wait a second,’ Razor said when Mr. J was done, this time sounding tremendously surprised. ‘Are you . . . punking me, Mr. J? At this hour of the morning?’
Mr. J could picture Razor shaking his shaved and shiny head like he always did when he found out that he had been tricked. The reason for Razor’s huge surprise was because Mr. J never joked.
‘I’d give anything for this to be a joke, Razor.’ Those words were delivered calmly, but full of sadness.
The long pause returned to the call.
‘So you mean to tell me that someone really did break into your house and not only murdered your wife, but he also made you watch it via a video-call?’
‘Yes.’
Mr. J could practically hear Razor’s thinking gears begin to spin faster.
‘Well, that’s just plain fucked up. No other way to put it. And you’re telling me that this isn’t payback for a job. This . . . masked freak didn’t somehow manage to track you down?’
‘It’s not payback,’ Mr. J confirmed decisively. ‘Whoever this guy is, on the phone, he had no idea of who I was. No idea of who I work for.’
‘How can you be so sure of that?’
Right then, Mr. J’s memory took him back to the thought he’d had just hours ago, when the interview with the LAPD detectives was finally over.
Yes, he now knew exactly what his mistake had been, or better yet, he knew exactly what the detectives’ mistake had been. He now knew why that interview had sounded so wrong. Why he had not once got the impression that he was a suspect in his wife’s murder, when he knew he should’ve been.
What had betrayed the two LAPD detectives hadn’t been one of their questions or anything they’d said, on the contrary, it had been something left unsaid. A question left unasked.
Once Mr. J was done describing the killer’s mask, one of the detectives should’ve asked him if he minded talking to a police sketch artist so they could have a composite drawing of it. That was the only logical progression to the interview, but the request never came.
Why?
Had they not believed him?
They had no reason not to.
It was then that Mr. J had remembered the look Detective Garcia had given Detective Hunter. It had been a subtle shifting of the eye that had lasted a mere second. He had seen it, but his tired and fragmented brain had failed to interpret it properly. That had been his mistake.
The look shared between both detectives had been a confirmation look, not a doubtful one, as if his description of the mask had matched what the detectives were already expecting, and that could mean only one thing – that they already knew about the mask – and if they already knew about the mask, then they already knew about the killer, and the only way that that was possible was if he had killed before.
‘Trust me, Razor, I’m sure. This wasn’t about me or any job I’ve done.’
The confidence in Mr. J’s words made Razor abstain from asking any more questions. For a moment, he put himself in Mr. J’s shoes. He also had a wife and two daughters who he loved very much. Even the quick pretend scenario in his head made him shake with anger.
‘I’m . . . sincerely sorry for your loss, my friend.’
Mr. J stayed quiet.
Razor knew then that this wasn’t a getaway. If the roles were inverted, he would be doing the exact same thing.
‘Do you know how to find him?’
‘Not yet, but I will.’
‘Of that I have no doubt, my friend. Do what you need to do . . . and Mr. J?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know you can count on me, right? If you need anything, and I mean anything, all you need to do is call. I have contacts all over this fucking country. This motherfucker isn’t getting away with this.’
‘Thank you.’
Mr. J disconnected from the call and smashed the pre-paid phone.
Fifty-Eight
The main facility of the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner was located on North Mission Road, number 1104. The building was an outstanding piece of architecture with hints of Renaissance. Old-fashioned lampposts flanked the extravagant entry stairway, with terracotta bricks and gray lintels fronting the stunning old hospital-turned-morgue.
Hunter and Garcia made their way up the steps that led to the building’s main entrance and approached the reception counter.
‘Hello, Detectives,’ the attendant said. She was a petite woman, with deep-set eyes, a pointy nose, and gleaming white teeth behind a very gentle smile.
‘Good morning, Audrey,’ Hunter greeted her back.
‘Morning, Audrey.’ Garcia followed suit.
‘Dr. Hove is in Autopsy Theater Two,’ Audrey said. With her index finger she indicated the double swing doors to the right of the reception.
Hunter and Garcia pushed through them and moved on to a bright white corridor with shiny linoleum floors that smelled heavily of antiseptic detergent. An empty gurney was pushed up against one of its walls. They went through a new set of double doors at the end of the corridor before turning left into a shorter hallway. As soon as they cleared the doors, the antiseptic smell changed into something much, much punchier, an odor that seemed to claw at the back of the throat and slowly burn the inside of the nostrils.
Hunter immediately brought a hand up to his face, cupping his fingers over his nose. No matter how many times he’d been through those corridors, he had never gotten used to that smell. He didn’t believe he ever would either.
A final right turn at the end of this second hallway and they were finally at the door to Autopsy Theater Two. Through the two rectangular windows on the stainless-steel plated doors, the detectives could see Dr. Hove inside. She was sitting on a tall stool, completely absorbed by something on her computer screen.
Hunter knocked three times.
Dr. Hove looked up and as she recognized the detectives she turned and hit the round green button on the wall behind her. The doors unlocked with a pressure-seal-like hiss. With a hand gesture, she motioned them inside.
Hunter and Garcia pushed the doors open and finally stepped into the large and uncomfortably cold room. Its walls were tiled in brilliant white. Its floor, just like the corridors outside, were done in shiny, squeaky-clean linoleum. Two stainless-steel autopsy tables sprang out of a long and wide drainage counter that hugged the west wall. At the end of each table sat an oversized sink equipped with a powerful water jet. Cassandra Jenkinson’s body, half covered by a light-blue sheet, lay on the table closest to them. Her head had been clean-shaved. Her hair would now be at the forensics lab for analysis.
‘Robert, Carlos.’ The Chief Medical Examiner for the Los Angeles County greeted both detectives.
Dr. Carolyn Hove was tall and slim, with piercing green eyes and long chestnut hair that had been tied back into a ponytail. Her surgical mask hung loosely from her neck, revealing full lips, prominent cheekbones and a small Grecian nose. Her voice had the sort of velvety and calm tone usually associated with experience and knowledge.
‘Not really how I’d like to spend
my Saturday morning,’ she said. ‘But one can’t always choose.’
‘We’re sorry about that, Doc,’ Hunter said. ‘I guess we would all rather be somewhere else.’
‘No need to apologize, Robert,’ the doctor replied. ‘It’s not your fault and I was scheduled to be here anyway. If not this case, I’d be working on a different one. The backlog is weeks long.’
Neither detective doubted that for a second. The LACDC was one of the busiest coroners in the country, and despite performing anywhere between twenty and forty postmortem examinations every day, the work would still sometimes accumulate.
‘OK,’ Dr. Hove said in a subdued tone, turning towards the body on the table. ‘Let me show you what this monster has done.’
Something in her tone of voice worried both detectives.
Fifty-Nine
Dr. Hove pulled back the light-blue sheet to completely reveal Cassandra Jenkinson’s naked body. The infamous Y-shaped incision, now closed and punctuated by thick black stiches, ran the entire length of her torso, starting at the top of each shoulder and terminating at the lower point of the sternum. A cranial incision, where a triangular cut is made across the top of the scalp to create a lid to the brain, had also been made.
Hunter and Garcia stepped a little closer.
The body on the table, with its shaved head, its eyes sunk deep into their sockets, and its rubbery-textured skin, appeared almost alien, but for some reason, the look on Cassandra’s face seemed a lot more peaceful now than it had back in her house. It was as if she was glad that her nightmare was finally over and she could feel no more pain.
‘Let me start with the basics,’ Dr. Hove said, handing each detective a copy of her autopsy report. ‘As I’m sure you both noticed back at the crime scene, with the exception of the fatal wounds inflicted to her skull and a small cut to the right side of her bottom lip, there are no other injuries to her body, defensive or otherwise. Her nails were also clean of any skin tissue. Unfortunately, she didn’t scratch at her assailant.’
‘So she really didn’t put up a fight?’ Garcia asked.
‘Not even a tiny one,’ the doctor confirmed. ‘Do you know how the killer gained access to the property?’
‘Not yet,’ Garcia replied. ‘There were no signs of forced entry anywhere, but we have reason to believe that he has possibly been in her house before.’
‘So you think that he was known to her?’
A small shrug from Garcia. ‘We’re looking into it, Doc.’
Dr. Hove nodded before facing Hunter. ‘I’ve put in an urgent request with the toxicology lab, so hopefully we’ll have confirmation by tomorrow, but your report says that according to the witness statement, the killer told him that he had injected the victim with something that would numb most of her body, but it would not do the same to her brain or her nervous system.’
‘Yes, that’s correct,’ Hunter confirmed.
Dr. Hove breathed out. ‘OK, so here is where the evil starts.’ She called their attention to the right side of Cassandra’s neck.
Both detectives bent forward to have a better look at it. Now that her head, face and neck had been cleaned from all the blood, Hunter and Garcia were able to clearly notice a tiny needle-prick to her skin, just under her ear.
‘In order for the killer to achieve that desired effect,’ the doctor explained, ‘he would’ve had to use a neuromuscular blocking agent and dose it absolutely perfectly, or else it would’ve also paralyzed the muscles needed for respiration and been lethal to her in minutes.’
Garcia flipped a page on the report. ‘And how easy would it be to obtain something like that, Doc?’
Dr. Hove made a ‘Who knows?’ face. ‘Go back fifteen years, maybe a little less, and any neuromuscular blocking agent would be pretty hard to come by, unless you were in a medical profession or had some very good contacts. Today? With the Internet and the thousands of illegal online drugstores? People can get it delivered to their door – gift-wrapped. No questions asked. No real record of purchase anywhere either.’
‘Great,’ Garcia said, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
‘I’m sure that both of you must’ve had a pretty good idea back at the crime scene,’ Dr. Hove continued, ‘but I can confirm that, just like the first victim, this one wasn’t sexually assaulted either, which solidifies the case for a non-sexual motive. Whatever this is about, it isn’t about sexual pleasure.’
Following her accounts, both detectives flipped another page on the report.
‘But whoever this killer is,’ the doctor added, ‘he’s very skillful, and he’s got at least some basic knowledge of neuroanatomy and trauma.’
‘Neuroanatomy?’ Garcia asked.
‘Let me explain.’ She stepped left and this time directed their attention to the victim’s head wounds. ‘As I’ve said before, there are no other injuries to her body, with the exception of the three perforations to her scalp.’
Hunter and Garcia repositioned themselves by Dr. Hove’s side. With Cassandra’s head now completely shaved, even with the rubbery-like skin and its discoloration, three very small punctures to her scalp were clearly noticeable. None of them looked to be any larger than three millimeters in diameter.
‘These perforations to her scalp caused a very particular type of fracture to her skull,’ the doctor proceeded.
‘Pyramid splinters,’ Hunter said, studying the three small holes on Cassandra’s head.
‘Exactly,’ the doctor confirmed.
‘Pyramid what?’ Garcia looked at his partner.
‘Dr. Hove can explain them better,’ Hunter said.
Garcia turned and face her.
‘It’s all in the report,’ she said. ‘But I’ll give you the quick version.’
‘That works,’ Garcia replied.
‘OK,’ she began. ‘Every human bone has a certain elasticity to it. The skull is no different. So, with a forceful traumatic impact, the skull bone depresses in the shape of the striking instrument.’ She brought her hands together, fingertips against fingertips, and slowly moved them downwards to simulate a bending effect. ‘With that, two things happen. One: You get parallel break lines on the surface of the bone; these are called terraced fractures. Two: On the interior of the bone, you get a deep depression fracture. In other words, a dent. It can happen to any bone, but when it happens on the inside of the skull, this dent causes a fracture called a pyramid splinter. As the name suggests, this is simply a pyramid of splinters, moving from top to bottom. The top splinter moves down, creating another splinter, which in turn moves down, creating yet another one, and so on. Are you still with me?’
Garcia nodded.
‘So, if the impact is forceful enough, these splinters will keep on projecting downward through the interior lining of the skull until they propel themselves deep into the brain tissue, like a bullet, causing instant termination of brain function and death.’
Garcia grinded his teeth as if he could feel the pain.
‘That’s what happened with the third and last puncture we have here.’ She indicated the wound right at the center of Cassandra’s skull. ‘The splinter fracture from this particular wound ripped through the precentral gyrus and the central sulcus of her brain, ending its trajectory at the postcentral gyrus.’ The doctor drew in a deep breath before locking eyes with both detectives. ‘She never had a chance.’
‘How about the other two wounds?’ Garcia asked.
Hunter looked down at the floor with sad eyes, as if he already knew the answer.
‘They both were forceful enough to also produce splinter fractures,’ Dr. Hove confirmed. ‘And though they did reach her brain, they didn’t travel deep enough to cause instant death.’ The tone in which Dr. Hove’s next few words were delivered practically froze the air. ‘But if she had lived, they would’ve produced irreversible brain damage.’ She went quiet for a few seconds while her eyes rested on Cassandra’s alien-looking face. ‘Though it took three fractures for her to perish, h
er life as she knew it was over from the very first hit.’
Sixty
As soon as they got back to their office, Garcia went straight to his desk and fired up his computer. Something had begun nagging at his brain halfway through Dr. Hove’s postmortem explanation. Something he desperately wanted to crosscheck.
Hunter left his partner to it, stepped outside, and placed a call to Cassandra Jenkinson’s husband. The phone rang only once before Mr. J answered it.
‘Hello!’
From his exhausted and full-of-gravel sounding voice, Hunter knew that he hadn’t slept a single second.
‘Mr. Jenkinson, this is Detective Robert Hunter with LAPD Homicide. We met at your house?’
Mr. J remained silent. At his request, Brian Caldron had already compiled a very comprehensive dossier on Detective Hunter. A dossier he had just finished reading, and he couldn’t deny that he was impressed.
Robert Hunter grew up as an only child to working-class parents in Compton, an underprivileged neighborhood of South Los Angeles. His mother lost her battle with cancer when he was only seven. His father never remarried and had to take on two jobs to cope with the demands of bringing up a child on his own. A child who turned out to be a prodigy.
From a very early age it was obvious to everyone that Hunter was different. He could figure things out faster than most. School bored and frustrated him. He finished all of his sixth-grade work in less than two months and, just for something to do, sped through seventh, eighth and even ninth-grade books. After being put through a battery of tests and exams, Hunter was transferred to a special school for gifted children, but even a special school’s curriculum wasn’t enough to slow his progress. Four years of high school were condensed into two and, with recommendations from all of his teachers, Hunter was accepted as a ‘special circumstances’ student at Stanford University. By the age of nineteen, he had already graduated in psychology – summa cum laude. At the age of twenty-three, he had received a Ph.D. in Criminal Behavior Analyses and Biopsychology. His thesis paper – titled An Advanced Psychological Study In Criminal Conduct – had become mandatory reading at the FBI’s National Center for the Analyses of Violent Crime (NCAVC) and it still was to this day.